TRANSNATIONAL TRAINING ACTIVITY

“WEB COURSE ON NORM CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES WITH A SPECIFIC FOCUS ON GENDER EQUALITY”

PART II “COLLEGIAL WORK”

The preschool represents the natural and ideal environment where rights and duties can be observed, analyzed and faced every day. The first exercise in dialogue is to discover the other and give progressive importance to others and their needs. Therefore our Educational Working Group focuses on some key aspects of teaching such as

• Care of the educational setting favouring the use of natural and / or unstructured materials, paying attention to routine moments (welcome, bathroom, lunch) and arranging neutral, open and atelier environments and spaces accessible to all according to their choices and personal inclinations
• Use of correct and appropriate language, masculine and feminine that does not slip into sexism
• Enhance individual resources and personal inclinations by offering everyone a plurality of languages through which to develop personal creativity
• Offer space, time, words to emotions in order to help boys and girls to develop a sense of their personal identity. This will help them to get in touch with their emotional world and thus enable them to recognize, express, and communicate their emotions freely.

An important role is the “circle time,” that is a space and time for exchange, reflection, discussion.

Starting from themselves, children can reflect and discuss the different ways and aspects of being the same and different by reading illustrated books. And then also ask questions and make assumptions.

Role of the adult: listen carefully and monitor; prevent and “demolish” gender stereotypes.

To raise awareness among children, it may be useful to start by reading illustrated books with stories with unconventional events and endings; “different” means non-traditional so as to present them models of masculinity and femininity.

Then through different tools such as images, lego characters, objects, children can invent stories that can also be dramatized.

Furthermore, it is possible to create a “disguises” atelier, a space not only to dress up but a real laboratory where children put themselves in the others’ shoes and live different experiences and identities.

Educating through example, gesture, word and play, thus offering children various opportunities and giving them the opportunity to choose and not have a single adult model of reference.

The different opportunities that everyday life offers can in fact represent a way to train and practise in respect of gender identity. The main objective for creating an inclusive school is to respect every difference and individuality of each one.